Among the many hotels whose handbills, pasted on the walls of the railway station, claimed the attention of travelers, Claudia selected "MacGruder's," because it was opposite Scott's monument.
She took a cab and drove there. She liked the appearance of the house, and engaged a comfortable suite of apartments, consisting of a parlor, bed chamber, and bathroom, and ordered dinner.
Now, by all the rules of tradition, Claudia, ignominiously expelled from her husband's house, deprived of her servants' attendance, far from all her friends, alone in a strange hotel in a foreign city, with a degrading trial threatening her—Claudia, I say, ought to have been very unhappy. But she was not. She was almost happy.
Her spirits rebounded from their long depression. Her sensations were those of escape, freedom, independence. She felt like a bird freed from its cage; a prisoner released from captivity; a soul delivered from purgatory. Oh, she was so glad—so glad to get away entirely, to get away forever—from the hold of sin, that Castle Cragg, where she had been buried alive so long; where she had lived in torment among lost spirits; where the monotony had been like the gloom of the grave, and the guilt like the corruption of death!
She had passed through the depths of Hades, and was happy—how happy!—to rise to the upper air again and see the stars. This, only, was enough for the present. And she scarcely thought of the future. Whatever that unknown future might bring her, it would not bring back Castle Cragg, Lord Vincent, Faustina, or Frisbie.
After she had refreshed herself with a bath and a change of dress, she went into the parlor, where she found a warm fire, a bright light, and a neatly laid table.
And whatever you may think of her, she really enjoyed the boiled salmon, roasted moor-hen, and cabinet custard she had ordered for dinner. After the service was removed she sat comfortably in her easy-chair before the fire, and reflected on her future movements.
She liked her quarters in this hotel very much. The rooms were clean and comfortable; the servants were polite and attentive; the meals delicately prepared and elegantly served.
And she resolved to remain here for the present; to write to her father by the first American mail; and while waiting for his answer, beguile the interval by seeing everything that might prove interesting in the city and in the surrounding country.
And in a locality so rich in historical monuments as this was, she was sure of interesting occupation for the month that must intervene before she could hear from her father in answer to the letter which she meant to write.